Holi at Stanford II - Mein Kampf

22nd Mar 1989, Borivali, Bombay: A little boy was filling his plastic water-pump from a bucket. Hardly a preschooler, his tiny arms were working hard to fill the pump up quickly. After all this was his new pump and he wanted to impress his friends. There were many coloured up boys and girls of various ages that day celebrating Holi in the terrace of his apartment building. His parents were looking elsewhere when it happened...

A really naughty older bully kid, coloured all over in dark violet and green, barged in to fill up his own pump from the same bucket. The little boy gracefully gave way, a little intimidated looking at the older one's face. Without warning, the bully lifted his violet coloured hand and brought it down in a hard painful slap onto the tiny one's back. The Whack was so hard, the bully's hand not only imprinted the little one's white shirt in violet but also his skin below in pink!

Wincing in pain, the little one screamed out, "Aww, Kyun Kiya aise?" (why did u do that?).
Grinning in pure evil, the bully replied, "Isse CHAPA kehte hain" (This is called an imprint!)
Knowing he'll get into a lot of trouble if he were to hit back, the little one just gave the bully a cold fuming stare.
Bully knew this and smiled again before walking away, "Darpok log CHAPA nahin de sakte" (cowards can't slap imprints)
The tiny boy vowed then that one day he'll prove the bully wrong........
(If this were a bollywood film, it would have starting raining in torrents immediately with background music)

20 years later....

27th Mar, 2010, Sandhill fields, Stanford: A young man in his mid-twenties stepped into the Holi grounds. Asha Holi at Stanford whose proceeds are to fund education in India, relentlessly attracts the young and old alike. Flanked at the entrance were two angels, randomly smearing faces of unsuspecting new entrants with pink and yellow powder. Expecting (or rather hoping :P) to get smeared, the young man slowed down in front of one of the angels and closed his eyes. An embarrassing odd pause followed, to be broken not with gentle coloured palms but by a rather harsh slap on his back. Eyes opened, instead of the delightful angel, he met two of his grisly old time acquaintances, "HAPPY HOLI man!"... Greetings followed but when his acquaintances left, the young man couldn't help realize that his first colour was a pink imprint of a hand on his shirt!! Memories raced back 20 years! The CHAPA! The bully... The vow! It was time to pacify some very old demons, he thought :-P ...

Change is the only constant of time. A lot of time had passed by... a lot of things had changed... there was no bully around ... there was no little boy either! Just a sea full of colourful people gleefully smearing and dousing each other with sweet smelling organic powders. No one to take revenge on! Arms that can pump over a hundred and fifty pounds - quite useless in this context. The young man could only see one way to pacify those old demons. Just prove that he was no DarPok! (coward). Loading up his palms with green powder, he began...

No force necessary and no slapping either. Courage is all that is really needed. Some would appear a little annoyed, but "Happy Holi" would cheer them up. Some would colour him back. Most others wouldn't even notice! This continued for a while until our guy met up with his friends. The latter did not quite understand why this otherwise gentle person was going around imprinting the shirts of totally random people with his colour laden palms!! But by then, the task was more than done! Any direction he would look he'd see a dozen shirts imprinted with the green hand! No more a Darpok, his CHAPA demons were finally laid to rest! It was time to go home and blog ;-)

"Happy Holi"